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So while I am sitting around waiting for my befuddled friend to need me I have been reading the Dickens I didn’t get around to the last time I was Dickensing. I’ve read Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, and Our Mutual Friend. It’s a really instructive pastime. Even though nobody could ever write like Dickens anymore, for lots of reasons, some of them having to do with the fact that Dickens already did it at great length, there’s a lot to be gotten out of seeing how he does things.
Now Dickens doesn’t have a reputation for subtlety. He does draw his individual characters quite broadly. When he’s sentimental, he’s roundly sentimental. When he’s outraged, he’ll tell you so. Not like some of your authors who will leave you scratching your head trying to figure out what’s irony and what’s sentiment. However, I do maintain there is a subtlety to Dickens that nobody seems to talk about. I could be wrong. I don’t read much in the way of criticism or academic writing about literature. Not because I don't approve, but because life’s short and there’s another three hours of Chuzzle to play.
The subtlety of Dickens is between. It’s in the interstices of relationships, the contrast of charfacters, the accumulation of events. Yes, even in the accumulation of events, though the plots are by and large old-fashioned melodramas adapted to Victorian high concept situations and plot drivers. It’s in that adaptation that the subtlety comes.
. Our Mutual Friend is the most recent one I finished, though I started to notice this in Nicholas Nickleby, the first I read of this quartet. All of the books share the propensity for making portraits of classes. You’ll see in these books that Dickens rarely leaves one personality to stand for a whole class of people. I suspect him of introducing subplots and making digressions so that he can properly develop the fullness of his. class portraits. An exception in Our Mutual Friend is the Jewish community, who are represented on stage by Riah and off stage by a benevolent progressive factory owning family (I didn’t know whether to think of Robert Owen or Friederich Engels). These are both Dickens Angels (about which more later). There’s a reason for that exception: they weren’t there to round out the picture of the Jewish people in that book, but in his whole oeuvre: they were there to address the antisemitic impression of Fagin from Oliver Twist. Deliberately and consciously, as Dickens had been taken to task after the publication of the earlier book. But I don’t think that Riah’s goodness and his dissertation on being a credit to ones race was just a gesture to the Jews who wrote to Dickens: I think it was, more than that, an opportunity to complicate the portrait.
I think so because for every type in Dickens you can find a contrasting type, or plural contrasting types. For your Veneerings as nouveau riche you can find your Boffins who also come into money , or you go abroad to other books and find Nicholas Nickleby’s benefactors, who also came by their money by honest hard work and who also have no children on whom to bestow their legacy and generosity. For the Pecksniff girls in Martin Chuzzlewit you may have the contrast of the Wilfer girls in Our Mutual Friend, or maybe not, because while both families are genteel, the Wilfer family is poor. But I don’t think that in the case of the girls, he’s making a point that genteel poverty is better for the character than relatively less poor gentility. Notice Lavinia, the younger Wilfer sister , doesn’t reform into the vision of domestic goddesshood that Bella does: she remains a shallow, hysterical tyrant. But she’s not a schemer, nor is she actually cruel, as is Charity, the older Pecksniff sister (who is allowed to gain our sympathy in her ill luck, as her younger, sillier sister is allowed to gain our sympathy in hers). None of these girls is a diametric opposite to any of the others. They’re all contrasts, though, changes rung on the theme of marriageable, genteel young woman. You could look at the horrible Miss Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby, or the downtrodden Mrs Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop, or any of a number of other ones I’d have to go reread books to remind myself of their names – and I probably will, given enough time up here on Gloria’s hillside.
Speaking of poverty, and I was not long ago, you have the contrast between Hexam and Riderhood, between Betty Higden and Silas Wegg, Charley and, well, Kit from The Old Curiosity Shop.. Hexam and Riderhood have the same rank and job, and neither thinks it’s stealing to take silver from a dead man’s pockets. But Hexam is honest according to his own lights, and dignified in his way, though he probably shouldn’t mistrust education. as he does. – notice Riderhood isn’t so averse to his daughter having a little learning: anything for an advantage. Again they are not diametric opposites, and neither are their daughters: both are hardworking girls trying to be “decent” at the bottom of the social ladder. At the risk of going on too long, I notice Betty Higden’s pride and independence, and her devotion to the children that come to her, contrasting with Silas Wegg’s scheming – and in her own way, she contrasts to the Squeers again, in her treatment of other people’s children, and especially her Sloppy as contrasted to poor Smike, who can also be contrasted to Tom Pinch – Dickens loves to have a simple, innocent bystander, usually in love in his own innocent way with the heroine, though lucky old Sloppy gets a girl of his own, and neither Sloppy nor Tom Pinch have to die to move the plot forward.
I mentioned Charley and Kit, so I have to say something though I am getting weary of it. (how did I ever write all those papers in high school and college?) Both of them are honest, respectable, hard working boys seeking to raise themselves from poverty. Charley’s selfish, and Kit’s not, and Charley seeks to distance himself from his origins, and Kit doesn’t feel the need. Charley’s origins are rather sordid, so you can understand it. But he’s not making a point about one or the other kind of upward aspirations. He’s just putting different ones into his miniature landscape to flesh out the nuances.
Dickens lays out his creed in the voice of Riah, the old Jew: you find the good and bad in all classes. But he’s not out to make that point. He’s not out to make points. I mean it. I’m not arguing that Dickens wasn’t crusading in his books. He crusades all over the place. He’s after the Poor Law. He’s after the Yorkshire schools. He’s after prejudice. He’s after the cruelties of capitalism. But he’s not making points. He’s developing portraits, like Jacob Riis’s photographs of New York poverty. No, not portraits. He’s building whole worlds in miniature. Worlds which move and act almnost independent of their author – you know he feels so, because in his author’s notes he talks about the characters as if they were living and breathing people. But he strives to contain the entire world in the covers of the book. Which is why his books are generally so everlasting long.
There’s a reason why he describes even the walkons and spear carriers so minutely and lovingly. The moral and political are movers in his clockwork: but the characters are the precision-cut cogs. They act on each other, they turn, they push, they pull, but all together.
That being said, Martin Chuzzlewit ended all wrong. Martin should have released Mary Graham, who should have married Tom Pinch. Oh well.
Now Dickens doesn’t have a reputation for subtlety. He does draw his individual characters quite broadly. When he’s sentimental, he’s roundly sentimental. When he’s outraged, he’ll tell you so. Not like some of your authors who will leave you scratching your head trying to figure out what’s irony and what’s sentiment. However, I do maintain there is a subtlety to Dickens that nobody seems to talk about. I could be wrong. I don’t read much in the way of criticism or academic writing about literature. Not because I don't approve, but because life’s short and there’s another three hours of Chuzzle to play.
The subtlety of Dickens is between. It’s in the interstices of relationships, the contrast of charfacters, the accumulation of events. Yes, even in the accumulation of events, though the plots are by and large old-fashioned melodramas adapted to Victorian high concept situations and plot drivers. It’s in that adaptation that the subtlety comes.
. Our Mutual Friend is the most recent one I finished, though I started to notice this in Nicholas Nickleby, the first I read of this quartet. All of the books share the propensity for making portraits of classes. You’ll see in these books that Dickens rarely leaves one personality to stand for a whole class of people. I suspect him of introducing subplots and making digressions so that he can properly develop the fullness of his. class portraits. An exception in Our Mutual Friend is the Jewish community, who are represented on stage by Riah and off stage by a benevolent progressive factory owning family (I didn’t know whether to think of Robert Owen or Friederich Engels). These are both Dickens Angels (about which more later). There’s a reason for that exception: they weren’t there to round out the picture of the Jewish people in that book, but in his whole oeuvre: they were there to address the antisemitic impression of Fagin from Oliver Twist. Deliberately and consciously, as Dickens had been taken to task after the publication of the earlier book. But I don’t think that Riah’s goodness and his dissertation on being a credit to ones race was just a gesture to the Jews who wrote to Dickens: I think it was, more than that, an opportunity to complicate the portrait.
I think so because for every type in Dickens you can find a contrasting type, or plural contrasting types. For your Veneerings as nouveau riche you can find your Boffins who also come into money , or you go abroad to other books and find Nicholas Nickleby’s benefactors, who also came by their money by honest hard work and who also have no children on whom to bestow their legacy and generosity. For the Pecksniff girls in Martin Chuzzlewit you may have the contrast of the Wilfer girls in Our Mutual Friend, or maybe not, because while both families are genteel, the Wilfer family is poor. But I don’t think that in the case of the girls, he’s making a point that genteel poverty is better for the character than relatively less poor gentility. Notice Lavinia, the younger Wilfer sister , doesn’t reform into the vision of domestic goddesshood that Bella does: she remains a shallow, hysterical tyrant. But she’s not a schemer, nor is she actually cruel, as is Charity, the older Pecksniff sister (who is allowed to gain our sympathy in her ill luck, as her younger, sillier sister is allowed to gain our sympathy in hers). None of these girls is a diametric opposite to any of the others. They’re all contrasts, though, changes rung on the theme of marriageable, genteel young woman. You could look at the horrible Miss Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby, or the downtrodden Mrs Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop, or any of a number of other ones I’d have to go reread books to remind myself of their names – and I probably will, given enough time up here on Gloria’s hillside.
Speaking of poverty, and I was not long ago, you have the contrast between Hexam and Riderhood, between Betty Higden and Silas Wegg, Charley and, well, Kit from The Old Curiosity Shop.. Hexam and Riderhood have the same rank and job, and neither thinks it’s stealing to take silver from a dead man’s pockets. But Hexam is honest according to his own lights, and dignified in his way, though he probably shouldn’t mistrust education. as he does. – notice Riderhood isn’t so averse to his daughter having a little learning: anything for an advantage. Again they are not diametric opposites, and neither are their daughters: both are hardworking girls trying to be “decent” at the bottom of the social ladder. At the risk of going on too long, I notice Betty Higden’s pride and independence, and her devotion to the children that come to her, contrasting with Silas Wegg’s scheming – and in her own way, she contrasts to the Squeers again, in her treatment of other people’s children, and especially her Sloppy as contrasted to poor Smike, who can also be contrasted to Tom Pinch – Dickens loves to have a simple, innocent bystander, usually in love in his own innocent way with the heroine, though lucky old Sloppy gets a girl of his own, and neither Sloppy nor Tom Pinch have to die to move the plot forward.
I mentioned Charley and Kit, so I have to say something though I am getting weary of it. (how did I ever write all those papers in high school and college?) Both of them are honest, respectable, hard working boys seeking to raise themselves from poverty. Charley’s selfish, and Kit’s not, and Charley seeks to distance himself from his origins, and Kit doesn’t feel the need. Charley’s origins are rather sordid, so you can understand it. But he’s not making a point about one or the other kind of upward aspirations. He’s just putting different ones into his miniature landscape to flesh out the nuances.
Dickens lays out his creed in the voice of Riah, the old Jew: you find the good and bad in all classes. But he’s not out to make that point. He’s not out to make points. I mean it. I’m not arguing that Dickens wasn’t crusading in his books. He crusades all over the place. He’s after the Poor Law. He’s after the Yorkshire schools. He’s after prejudice. He’s after the cruelties of capitalism. But he’s not making points. He’s developing portraits, like Jacob Riis’s photographs of New York poverty. No, not portraits. He’s building whole worlds in miniature. Worlds which move and act almnost independent of their author – you know he feels so, because in his author’s notes he talks about the characters as if they were living and breathing people. But he strives to contain the entire world in the covers of the book. Which is why his books are generally so everlasting long.
There’s a reason why he describes even the walkons and spear carriers so minutely and lovingly. The moral and political are movers in his clockwork: but the characters are the precision-cut cogs. They act on each other, they turn, they push, they pull, but all together.
That being said, Martin Chuzzlewit ended all wrong. Martin should have released Mary Graham, who should have married Tom Pinch. Oh well.